Internet service for expanding my roofing materials business

Entrepreneur

About Me

My name is Davy Mwansa, I was born in 1964 in Mwense district of Zambia. My father was a soldier, who fought in the Second World War and later on fought as a freedom fighter for the independence of Zambia. In 1968, he left the army and moved to the Copperbelt, where he joined the mines in Kitwe. It is here where I did my primary and part of my secondary school education. Thereafter, I moved back to Luapula, to complete my secondary school education.

After my secondary school education, I moved back to Kitwe, where I did my Certificate in Business Management. After my college education, I joined a construction company, Minestone Zambia Limited, as a stores clerk, and worked for two years. I left and joined another construction company Telia Jobbing Contractors as a contracts coordinator. I worked for two years and left – I moved onto Lusaka and joined Awan Zambia Limited, another mining firm, as a business manager. It is here I thought of the only way I could satisfy myself financially is by working for myself. I teamed up with two other colleagues and formed a company which did not last. I moved on and formed my own, which I am now currently running.

I am a widower, having lost my wife in 2012. Currently, I am staying with my 2 children who are still doing their secondary education. The other 5 have completed their education and are working for themselves.

My Business

I am currently involved in the business of trading in steel roofing sheets, which I am supplying to individual and corporate customers, doing constructions for their roofing material needs.

This business is sustaining me and giving me a salary income of about $700 per month. It is this money that I am using for paying my housing rent, paying for my school-going children’s fees, and other domestic needs. Apart from sustaining myself, the business is able to pay for the 5 permanent staff I am working with, as well as some commission-based field salesmen.

The business is moving well, due to the increasing number of constructions going on country-wide, due to increasing demand for decent accommodation. This business is promising to be going on for more years to come and assuring us of continuing being in business, as more people still want to build and their buildings will be incomplete without our supplying them the roofing sheets they need for their buildings.

The business however has been affected by the down turn of the world sump down economy and we have not been spared.
The sky rocketing. And unstable exchange rates brought about recording of lower sales than the previous year. Income from sales and savings dropped to about. 50 percent. This made it a bit difficult to save enough for other business logistics such as investing in buying new and additional office supplies such as computers and printers to take business to higher hieghts. The only computer I have has been affected by eratic supply of power and not working properly hence the need of buying a laptop.
It is for this reason that I need the additional funds of 700 ZMW to buy a my current savings so that I can buy a new laptop for use in my daily transaction record keeping and also check on other sources supply of materials.

Once I achieve this, I will work with less difficulties by shortening the length of time I will spend to save so that I can buy the equipment.

Loan Proposal

The data bundles will be used for internet to research international sources of our materials which are steel flat sheets and other related roofing accessories which are not available locally.

I do have a challenge in accessing internet in my office. In this case, I rely on buying internet bundles of 1GB costing US$17.60. This will last me for 2 days only. So if am to work efficiently, I need to purchase at least 6 GB bundles which will enable me to work well up to the end of the month. This will cost me US$66.40, an equivalent of K498.75 in local currency. So my initial loan with Zidisha will cover most of this cost.

This loan will be very beneficial to me in the sense that it will open up my locked up ideas of importing materials from abroad and also enable me visit the Zidisha website frequently as a prerequisite of being part of the Zidisha family.

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